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Labour’s poll lead disappears despite Tories’ weakness

The Labour Party’s poll lead over the Conservatives has evaporated, according to two opinion polls published this weekend.

It is to be hoped that these results will jolt Ed Miliband and his circle of close advisors out of the complacency they have been enjoying for the past months and years – and into a realisation that supporters of Labour ideals want the party to reflect those ideals.

It seems clear that announcements from Labour, that it will continue to follow Conservative-dictated spending plans (no matter how Labour chooses to spend the money), that it will continue with austerity policies that have utterly failed the British people, that it will not reverse Michael Gove’s harmful education ‘reforms’ and that it will only do its best (whatever that is) to reverse the privatisation of the National Health Service in England, are all falling on deaf ears.

The British people do not want watered-down Conservatism from the Labour Party. A continuation of neoliberal ideas from the 1970s – which is what we’ve had from Blair, Brown and Cameron – will only drive the country further into financial ruin. It’ll be great for the extremely rich – but that could be said of the Third World dictatorships in Africa, Asia and South America, against which the United Kingdom should most correctly (now) be compared.

It’s past time for Labour to throw off these failed policies, stand up and fight. If Ed Miliband and his shadow cabinet don’t have it in them, they’d better make way for socialists who can.

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Let’s have a pll on who should be able to take part in a poll, these things are meaningless even the by elections are dubious as being realistic as to the outcome of the next election. The fact that the biased BBC is trying to make out the budget was wonderful and made many votes for the tories for example is the sort of propaganda that drives these thing.

How could anyone be surprised at this? The difference between them in the polls is no more than a reflection of the difference there is between them in matters of policy – which is virtually none. Worse still the Tories set the scene and Labour simply come trotting up behind them a day or so later only to agree with them and say they will follow the exact same path. Any wonder why;
1. People don’t vote because they are seen as “all the bloody same”? and
2. The perceived differences have become so minuscule that people waver at the slightest hint of difference.

Totally agree Mike.. Until Labour wakes up and realises it is the welfare cuts that are a major concern to most of us and to anyone who has a conscience.. They will lose the next election due to apathy..

I totally agree that Labour have to do something different to what they have up to now but they don’t seem to want to. Are they scared of being in government over a country in the state it is? As for the polls, since they were both run by Tory papers, the results are somewhat expected.

Not surprised at all – Labour have had 4 years to do something, anything to fight against the welfare cuts, and to help the people that they are *supposed* to be the party they are there for! They’ve really done nothing when all is said and done.
The Scottish Labour here are the same, if not worse! They have no preparations if the Yes vote goes through. It’s like the whole of the Labour party all over the UK is just waiting to see what happens and if they do get in, then they’ll make things up as they go along!
There has been absolutely no fight in this opposition and I am ashamed of them, as I am deeply ashamed of the people who didn’t vote last time and will not vote this time.

I hate it when people say Labour have done nothing. Osborne himself made it clear in his budget speech that Labour has opposed every measure the Coalition government has brought in.
The fact of the matter is – and you should know this as it is the way our Parliament works – that a party or Coalition with a majority can push through any measure it fancies, whether it was in their manifesto or not, without any trouble at all as they command a majority of the votes in the House of Commons. Labour has opposed the Conservatives – and has been extremely vocal about it – but has been unable to make a dent (except – historically – in the matter of military action against Syria. Perhaps you’d forgotten about that?) because of that majority held by the Conservatives and Tory Democrats. The fact that you haven’t heard that opposition says more about the mainstream media than about Labour.
It is utter nonsense to say there has been no fight in the Labour Party; if you really believe that, then you are buying into a Tory-promoting narrative built up by a Tory-supporting media base.

All I heard from Labour in the wake of the Budget was the repeated line about living standards having fallen and workers being £1,600 a year worse off. What I DIDN’T hear was how Labour intends to fix that, or any of the other myriad ills that have affected us since May 2010.

Peopel need a REASON to apply their votes to Labour and Miliband-Balls are not providing them with one. They are sleep-walking into another hung Parliament and a very real risk of the Tories teaming up with UKIP. Then we’ll REALLY see nazism grip this country.

Why on earth would UKIP team up with the europhile tories? UKIP isn’t right wing that is media nonsense, and to assume that it would lead to nazism displays a complete reliance on the propaganda spread by the europhile media on your part to gather information. conlablibdum are all the same policies, why vote for them or the greens who want to cover the land with windmills.

Try and find details of UKIP’s Welfare Reform Policy…It was there shortly after the election, until someone pointed out they basically were advocating the COMPLETE BAN OF ALL WELFARE SYSTEM…Zilch, Nada, Nicht, None…Low and behold as soon as it hit FB and a few others..The policy was deleted and denied from their manifesto which had been online. Don’t be fooled by the eccentric smiles and Farage Propaganda…they would be just as unfair as the Tories.

Lets see like every other party there is no current UKIP manifesto the last was was torn up by Farage before being adopted because he thought it was drivel and yet you claim to know what UKIP policies are, don’t let yourself be fooled by the conlablibdum party which is why we currently have. By the way there has never been any intention from UKIP to completely Ban the welfare system, only the tories nulab and libdums would be stupid enough to do that which is exactly what we have had for the last 18 years.

Mike you seem to be unable to understand what is being said try reading my first 11 words, where is the lib sum manifesto? although we know it is give all power to brussells, where is the tory manifesto, although it is lets try and fool the people into thinking we can alter the eussr, where is the labour manifesto although we know it is will I get a cushy job in europe? Where is the green manifesto which we know will be lets increase our carbon footprint building windmills everywhere. That’s right they are not there so the only thing that is certain about the UKIP manifesto is to provide the British public with the referendum that the other parties won’t.

Now can we get on to some useful posts instead of trying to emulate the brain dead ping pong of prime ministers question time.

You haven’t been paying attention.
I’ve been talking about the parties’ policies; you’re the only one who mentioned manifestos. Were you trying to confuse the rest of us?
We’re all well aware of the main parties’ policies, whether they have a manifesto out at the moment or not, because they publicise their plans. The Conservatives have part of their website dedicated to policies; so do the Liberal Democrats. Labour has a website, separate from the main party website, for policy discussion and makes periodic policy announcements.
UKIP has an “Error 404 – category not found” notice.
The best alternatives are Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party; or the BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22396690. Both provide a fair bit of detail, but of course they are not official UKIP pages. Officially, to go by your comments, it appears that UKIP has no policies.

Well the labour one nation one doesn’t have any hard and fast policies at the present, wiki is hardly a good place to look anyone could write there, and the BBC certainly can not be relied upon to report the truth, they are the governments propaganda machine, as we in Stafford have had all to well proven by the continual attack on our hospital by them on behalf of the conlablibdum party.

Your comment is not entirely unexpected. Without anything on the UKIP page, however, these are the clearest expressions of UKIP policies.
You don’t like it? Persuade UKIP to get its policy page back up…
… and then we can all laugh at UKIP for being more right-wing than the Tories.

Well it shouldn’t be unexpected you knew that I would respond with that fact, however you claims to know what UKIP’s policies are is just as much your own expression as my expressions that Clegg Milliband and Cameron are rabid europhiles is mine the difference being that my expression is based on facts known for a long time. You will not be able to laugh at UKIP being more right wing than the conlablibdum party because fit isn’t.

The Tories are getting away with national socialist lies and Labour are letting them do it. The people are looking for a way out of this nightmare but all they see is a load of headless chickens being chased around by the butcher Cameron and his henchmen. Why ? The would be voters DEMAND change and need bold new policies to blunt the Tory cutters. If the Labour Party cannot come up with policies which are radical then they don’t deserve to be in power at the next election or ever.Instead of trying to copy the Tories cut for cut to bring down the debt this country created by the bankers and waved through by the labour party pre crash and continued up this lying government. they need to think outside the box. It’s obvious that the country has drowned in a sea of civil service nothing jobs which produce nothing at all but more civil service jobs like a virus from pointless second rate education to pointless paper pushers in government.Yes,they are jobs but they don’t produce anything that we as a nation can sell,that’s the key. We are good at making things but have lost much of it through this stupid notion that we can become rich by selling services,it just doesn’t cut it in the real world. Yes,some services we can sell and we do but you can’t always always rely on it. Let’s hear lmore on investment in invention,and innovation. Let’s get policies on mass building using new ways to manufacture in factories and assembly.Lets go back to the principal that learning is for life to keep everyone’s skill base up to scratch and make it FREE from cradle to retirement…so if your not in work you are always learning. Let’s be even more radical and do away with income tax for everyone who works and replace it with VAT only….but on everything! We would then only be spending what we can afford as a nation and not borrowing for repayment tomorrow,which as we all know never never comes. Yes,we would need to pay for this radical change in the short term and you can’t do it overnight but there are many ways to raise taxes which can also profit the country instead of the few. The outdated notion that the few can be wealthy at the expense of the many is so 20th century. The Labour Party needs to wake up and soon.

Labour DOES oppose Coalition policies. How many times do I have to point to the way Tories repeatedly tell us Labour has opposed EVERY SINGLE austerity policy brought in by the Coalition?
Again, look at the evidence before regurgitating the lies, please.

That is not the same as not opposing the introduction of those policies.
Look at what actually happened, not at the way you would prefer events to have taken place.
You were saying that Labour hasn’t opposed the policies; a cursory examination of Hansard will show that you are mistaken.

Ed Balls worries me because he seems intent on copycatting Osborne. For example Osborne says he will run a surplus by the end of the next Parliament and Balls promises the same. Osborne say he will be introducing a Benefit Cap on social security spending on working age benefits (which could have devastating effects and lead to real terms cuts in benefits for years on end) and Balls says that Labour will vote with the Coalition to introduce it. And so on and so forth. The Stephen Timms says that the mass building of affordable and social housing might not go ahead for sure if money is tight and the only thing Labour are committed to is the Compulsory Jobs Guarantee.

Surely we need some clear red water between Labour and the Tories?

Surely Labour needs to differentiate itself more from the policies of the Coalition?

Just flying a kite here..I wonder if Labour DO have some policies up their sleeves and they are keeping hteir powder dry to maximize coverage of the damage being done by the Tories and well as not giving away their intended policies until the main run up to the election so as not to reveal policies the Tories might steal a run on..? Just saying..But unless they do sorry but I’m going Green in protest. Or The Peoples Assembly if the option is there locally..

I sent an email to the Labour Party asking for its policy on TTIP, amongst other things. They were decidedly equivocal and I felt no reassurance at all.

I think it’s about we faced facts, Labour aren’t being coy in a pre-election year to avoid frightening the horses, they really are just another pack of neo-liberals.

They may have their two policies – two! – that will appeal to lefties that it seems they’re going to keep hammering away at (dumping the bedroom tax and limiting energy bills) but when polls are showing the public is to the left of the Labour party on many issues and the party don’t move left to gather those votes then you have to admit it: Labour as a left wing party is properly over. Any anticipated revival of left wing policies, or even mildly social democrat policies, is not going to materialise.

As you say above, they will continue with the charade of austerity despite the harm it causes. They will also continue with the makework scheme for unemployed people. I mentioned workfare in my email – poorly paid forced labour is the order of the day and the person who replied completely ignored my point about unemployment being deliberately created to keep inflation in check, so in other words they still want to use unemployed people as a punchbag to attract idiot right wing voters rather than tell the truth about the economic reasons for unemployment.

The party is now largely populated by reptiles, cowards, chancers and psychopaths (remember Ed stabbed his brother in the back to get the job of leader – not the action of a good man), expecting anything like morality or decency is pissing into a north-easterly gale.

I would point out that Ed didn’t stab anybody in the back to get the job of leader. He was eligible to seek election so he went for it; no foul. Tories say he stabbed David in the back because it suits their narrative to do so and distracts from the fact that Tory leaders are traditionally backstabbed when the majority of that party believes they will harm Conservative electoral chances.
Apart from that, there’s much to recommend your comments.

I thought David M was odds-on to win til Ed stepped in at the last minute? That’s how I recall it, at least.

I despise this new brand of Labour career politicians. Absolutely f***ing loathe them. Bland, talentless, smug, drab little personality disordered turds with nothing but PPEs and a sense of entitlement. There’s not a day’s hard work among them – politics is their hobby, not a job or a calling and it shows. Most of look like they’re discussing an alien, abstract concept when they talk about ‘real people’.

I wish they’d all get train sets or take up stamp collecting and leave politics to adults who can show a bit of empathy and nous rather than speak and spell machines in suits.

The big parties are the same and the small ones are either extremist or too small to waste my vote on. At least the luckless Lib Dems are still stuck on 9%-no one likes a traitor. My favourite bit of the election will be watching the Lib Dems cast out of their high positions and trampled down into the mud where they belong.

A saying popped up in American culture in the early 1920s. The saying refers to the learning of a process without an understanding of why it works. Another definition implies the act of mimicry, usually with limited knowledge and/or concern of the consequences. The saying could originate from the folklore of Mali, West Africa, made well known by Esphyr Slobodkina’s retelling, which she calls Caps for Sale (A Tale of a Peddler, There are also various other versions of this folk-tale, such as The Hatseller by Baba Wagué Diakité, set in Mali.In French, the same saying exists:. For thoses amonst us probably due to past educational reforms lack French translates into

“Monkey See – Monkey do”

Say no more

Tommaz Jay
Sill walowing in the excrement of the political under class.

In real life, I have no idea where the Selfservatives get any support from, I can’t find anyone who supports them, not a single one, including business owners, and a few other ‘professional’ people.
It was different 2 years ago, with a few still screaming “There’s always jobs for those that really want to work”, but not now that even they’ve ended up experiencing the dark side for themselves!

The “employed” figures are being overstated because anyone whose esa has expired or anyone being sanctioned is claimed to be working although they are not, being off benefits doesn’t mean you are working.

Not strictly true. Those whose contributory ESA has expired are marked as not being unemployed, which isn’t the same as being employed. Likewise for those under sanctions.
People on workfare/work programme schemes ARE marked as employed, though.

maybe Ed Miliband is playing things close to his chest………has no one noticed that when he comes out with something he will do if he gets into Westminster cameron n his cronies do the same or do something that will stop milliband doing whatever it was he intended doing. just the same as when the UN or court of human rights or EU come down on the side of the people, camerons lot CHANGE THE LAW to suit themselves thus making any jurisdiction given by any of those bodies, null and void or to close loopholes etc. no one can get justice because of how they deviously work. so why NOT keep ideas out of the public domain until as close to the election date as possible? that way,if they can win the election, they wont be stopped at base 1 by some new law or policy the torydem lot passed which either forestalls or stops altogether whatever Ed was going to do,.

That’s a fair point, and one that has occurred to me before.
The trouble is, it doesn’t deal with a major part of the problem, which is the way Labour’s front bench seems to agree with the Conservatives that austerity is the only way forward; it isn’t.
Austerity is a neoliberal policy designed to take money away from society’s poorest and give it to society’s richest – and that’s all. It’s hardly a policy for a political party that’s supposed to stand up for the people who struggle to make ends meet.
Not only that, but Labour spokespeople seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths, by voicing support for Coalition policies everyone knows they should deplore. Why do they insist on making these stupid schoolchild errors – unless they aren’t errors and these shadow cabinet members really mean what they’re saying?
That’s what is confusing voters. Is Labour against Tory policy or collaborating with it? For the moment we don’t know, and that means people absolutely will not vote ‘Labour’. It’s too risky.
But this puts the entire country at risk because the alternative is a full-on, frothing-at-the-mouth, psychotic Conservative government, in which nobody will be safe unless they own a fortune and keep it offshore.
This is why people are getting so angry with Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and the others. Their inexplicable behaviour is putting us all at risk.

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